& we had hunches: tension, trash bin, blindness.
Or they settled in with their primer and aftermath:
this & this & hunks of our ordinary lives.
We held signs with artful wounds
& shields & articulated
each chorus of what we should avoid. We said questions
no one answered. Not knowing, we made notes
in our beds with our bodies. Scraped & clicked
& our stories of their stories
were sarcastic. We cast side-eyed
because little else tore down the riddles.
We saw them in a catalog of masks.
We saw them put on their helmets.
We laughed in unsatisfactory ways
especially loud in our performance
& some of us burned
with exhaustion. When we woke, some of us hid.
We wouldn’t unclench. Wouldn’t pour out
of our glasses our fear
but we were brusquely positive they were
killing our meadows.
The day it happened there were such winds.
Those winds pressed forward. You wouldn’t believe
all the versions that the sky blew that day
and those many that followed.